Could MBAM users ever expect this as a new service?

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Could we ever expect to see a VPN service from MalwareBytes as an included or seperate service? Yes, there are hundreds of VPN services out there already but a lot of those are by companies that a lot of us may have never heard of. When someone wants to use a VPN, they're expecting to use it for their privacy and the companies that run a lot of VPNs, as I already said, pretty much aren't reputable. I'm sure their users wonder if the service provider is stealing or logging their information without their knowledge and possibly making a profit by selling that information. I'd think seeing a VPN service from Malwarebytes, one of the most recognizable names in computer protection, would yield great results from both sides. If the service was built into MBAM, we also wouldn't need an extra program taking up space on our HDs and would be pretty convenient for current users that do use VPN services.

Just an idea, not sure if someone made a thread on this topic already but I checked 2 pages back and found nothing. Also did a broad search on the forums but only found threads where their VPN was having issues working correctly with MBAM running.

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Thank you for your input @Insomnimatic - I've alerted the team to your suggestion.

Ron

Not a problem and I have to say Thank you to you, @AdvancedSetup and the team here on the forums for taking the time to help customers and trial owners alike. It's nice to see a community that cares about its users and isn't afraid to get directly involved with helping them, whether it be removal of persistent malware down to simple suggestions for the product and receiving a response from the team about it. This is my second day visiting the forums and I see the hard work you all put into this.

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I'm a former employee of Malwarebytes who worked on the product team helping determine what features and services went into Malwarebytes and their other offerings and this is something I did bring up at one time and it was explained to me at the time that Malwarebytes likely would not go into the VPN business for a couple of reasons. First, which you yourself already called out, is the fact that there are already a lot of VPN providers out there so the market is pretty saturated at this point, and while some security vendors are getting into the VPN space as part of/in addition to their normal offerings, it would likely be difficult to compete with the major VPN vendors, especially when there are some which are free (like those which are ad supported). Second is the issue of cost and the logistical ramifications of attempting to provide a global VPN service to all of our customers; something which would cost a lot and might not necessarily prove to be a compelling/desirable feature/service for the vast majority of our customers. A server infrastructure large enough to support the millions of Malwarebytes customers out there would be massive and very costly to set up and maintain, and while we could lease servers from a CDN provider perhaps (like Amazon etc.), doing so would in my opinion at least, reduce the trust users had in the service (Malwarebytes would need to be the ones in direct control/ownership of the servers to maintain that trust you're talking about; at least I believe so).

Finally, there is the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Malwarebytes is a US based company. This means that they are beholden to certain laws which limit drastically the amount of privacy that customers would have with regards to their data and traffic passing through the servers, and while it is possible to delete said data on a frequent enough basis to get around it, there is still always the risk that the government could take steps to force Malwarebytes to hand over whatever they do have for the purposes of a federal investigation.

Also, at one point when I broached this topic with a colleague, one of the Developers, he explained that if people really want online privacy their best bet is to use something like TOR rather than one of these VPN services since it is always possible that the VPN provider might actually be logging traffic even when they claim they are not as there's no way to truly verify it. I personally don't use TOR, however I do use DNSCrypt (however I use alternate servers which do not log and also use DNSSEC in addition to the DNSCrypt protocol for added security/anonymity). DNSCrypt doesn't completely mask my traffic, however it does prevent my ISP from snooping, which is my main concern since ISPs are most frequently the ones hit with mass data seizure requests from the government when conducting such investigations. Don't get me wrong, I'm not up to anything shady, however I do very much value my privacy, which is why such services exist to begin with. I take other measures as well to secure my privacy including blocking ad and tracking servers, social media sites, major telemetry data servers such as those belonging to the likes of Google and Microsoft and I by default block all cookies as well as Flash so that each site I visit that wishes to use them displays a prompt in my browser allowing me to allow them to save cookies or to use Flash or to refuse it so that they are blocked (Flash is one of the primary means of sites installing the infamous 'ever-cookies' and 'super cookies' you may have heard of these days).

So while it is entirely possible Malwarebytes may one day change their minds about it, I doubt very much that Malwarebytes will be getting into the VPN provider space any time soon. Thanks for the request though, and if you have any other ideas for Malwarebytes please don't hesitate to submit them. They're always looking for constructive feedback and ideas on how to better serve their users and improve their offerings.